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Video Poem Remix: Four Seeds Seeking Roots

Terry wrote the other day of seed catalogues, crafting a fine poem and offering an invitation to write with him in three stems — in the comments, in an etherpad, and in the margins. I took him up on all three and then later added a fourth: Mastodon. He added another branch, remixing my four poems.

This is the sixth: a video interpretation, as I composed on mobile device four small pieces of music to go with each piece, calling them Seed, Seedling, Sapling and Stories. Each piece has two poems — mine and then Terry’s remix.

Process Notes: I used Pablo to make the poems visual, keeping the same backdrop for each variation. The music was composed in Garageband app or ThumbJam app, written each time after reading both poems for each section multiple times. I redid the Stories piece twice, and still am not sure it does what I want it to do. Ah. Well. The video was edited and produced in iMovie. I thought about using the plant theme in Animoto, but you can’t sync music to image in there, so I stayed with iMovie.

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I feel nothing but gratitude for your work here. I am reminded of William Carlos Williams’
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems;
yet men die miserably every day
for the lack
of what is found there.”
I often feel what you feel. That feeling springs from a world that doesn’t share a deep desire to “get the news from poems”, the news that stays news. I get the same feeling you get when I laugh at Douglas Adams’ dolphins whose parting shot is, “So long and thanks for all the fish”–so quizzical, so funny, so eventually revelatory. Again, I am grateful if nothing else.

Anti-spamiferosity: do vegans Do vegans dream of electric carrots? Those were the words I heard spoken to ma as I slowly rose up through the hypnagogic haze of last night’s dreams. I must’ve sat on the bed for ten minutes with those words running through my head. I’m not vegan nor do I like carrots. What possible context could I have to inspire such a phrase? I arose to make coffee and look out over the whited out landscape through my kitchen window and wonder, “Do vegans dream of electric carrots?”

Terry, you are knocking me out here with the Anti-samiferosity. ‘I’m not vegan nor do I like carrots’. ROFL. The imagery of electric carrots is definitely a digital alchemical moment.

The news that stays news! yes.

Anti-spam-orify – Eater men: How many men get eaten up by jealousy and greed? How much can one person eat? I dry retch when I think of those eating competitions that are filmed as some sort of entertainment. It is some sort of cruel spell that eating puts over us.

The music is beautiful! You and Terry amaze me — the volleying between you two stumps me. I need a guided tour to understand what is going on, mostly.

Could you also recommend me tutorials or resources which are short and effective on how to use Garageband? I’e tried viewing YouTube videos. They were not helpful. I’m still left not understanding how to use it. I have Garageband 10.3.2.